


Kill with a Thousand Words

by DamnthatGeko



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Exhaustion, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, Squint and you'll miss it, Thrawn talks about his feelings for once in his life, kind of, lots of art conversations, ship is mild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29264895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamnthatGeko/pseuds/DamnthatGeko
Summary: Exhaustion was a truth serum more powerful than alcohol or necessity. It was also, in Eli's experience, a universal constant across all beings he had ever known. If anything toppled empires and ended civilization, it would be lack of sleep.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	Kill with a Thousand Words

**Author's Note:**

> Not a beta in sight (I'm sure there are many grammar and spelling issues).

Exhaustion was a truth serum more powerful than alcohol or necessity. It was also, in Eli's experience, a universal constant across all beings he had ever known. If anything toppled empires and ended civilization, it would be lack of sleep.

Eli rubbed at his tired eyes, seeing stars streak like hyperspace with the pressure. He raised his head back up to look at the datapad in his lap, the words rippled on the screen like water in a river.

Kriff, he was tired.

The _Thunder Wasp_ was on another pirate hunt. Having found the world where the pirate's fence for their stolen cargo was located, the ship had encountered resistance from the locals. They just needed the names of the people involved, but the beings on the planet had closed ranks like a blast shield. That left Eli to comb through import and shipping claims to find the one consistent influx of goods that corresponded to the pirate's visits. It was a whole planet's worth of documents.

"Tired, Ensign Vanto?"

"I could sleep for a week," Eli croaked.

At least he wasn't alone. Thrawn had taken a section of the documents on himself as well. They had a short window in which to nail the fence. Between the minor repairs, courtesy of their current pirate quarry, and the orders to return to patrol the hyperspace lanes, they only had about thirty hours. This was the twenty-second hour without sleep and they only had eight left before repairs were completed.

"I'll retrieve more caf," Thrawn said, rising from his office chair.

Eli nodded vaguely in affirmation. His eyes were just not focusing on the numbers on his screen.

He sat back in his chair, letting his datapad rest loosely in his hand. They had been holed up in Thrawn's office since the beginning of the project, using its larger space and built in terminal to their advantage. Thankfully he kept comfortable guest chairs, one of which Eli had pulled up to the wrong side of the desk to share the workspace with Thrawn. Although he was so tired at this point his body's natural state seemed to have become a kind of indolent uncomfortableness.

Thrawn crossed to the little coffee service that they had co-opted at the fifteen hour mark. He busied himself with the water-boiler and caf packets.

"Ordering more scans?" Eli had noticed the terminal on Thrawn's desk. It wasn't currently showing the blindingly numbing rows of figures, but was now displaying an order form for high quality sculpture scans for holo reproduction. Eli had seen Thrawn fill those out many times before.

"Oh, yes." Thrawn turned around with two steaming cups of caf. He placed one on the desk near Eli and then crossed to his chair behind the desk. "It's for a famous sculptor who saw prominence fifty standard years ago on the planet. I thought some insight might make our search proceed faster."

Eli grimaced. "Anything to speed things up," he said and rubbed his eyes again. Drat, his gloves were scraping the bruised flesh under his eyes.

"I think I might be able to eliminate a few continents and cultural backgrounds." There was a soft blip of transmission as something on Thrawn's terminal sent a data packet off. "There, I should have them within the hour."

"We should get back to work then," He said reluctantly.

"Indeed."

Eli lifted his datapad back to his face, squinting to keep the numbers from doing a jig across the screen. He managed to check another ten lines of shipping documentation before the little letter aurek at the beginning of the name of the shipping company began to do cartwheels across the rows.

He lowered the datapad again and rubbed his eyes.

Ouch. Kriff it.

He ripped off his glove and threw it to the ground, rubbing his face with his freed hand before he remembered Thrawn was in the room with him. He peeked up at him through his fingers. 

The chiss stared as his own datapad, stock still. It took Eli a moment to realize that his pupils weren't moving. _Good to know I'm not the only one losing focus_.

He raised his datapad again.

And put it right back down on his knees, as a thought popped into his head and jumped right past his exhausted filters and out his mouth.

"What about personal bias?"

"Hm?" Thrawn lowered his own datapad, elegantly placing it on his desk perfectly parallel to the edge as though he didn't feel sand in his eyes and the crushing weight of exhaustion on his shoulders.

"Uh, not your personal biases. I mean-" Eli floundered for a moment while his brain searched for words. "You said you could eliminate cultural backgrounds, continents, all that, if you have a sample of the planet's art. But what if the artwork you find is a representation of the artist's personal beliefs and not the general culture's or species'?"

Eli took a sip of caf, surprised at how eloquently he had managed to phrase it. _I might be half dead but at least I can still communicate._

Thrawn took a moment to answer, his head swaying slightly back and forth minutely. Years ago Eli wouldn't have been able to interpret that, but experience has told him that the other man was considering his words, and taking longer to come to a conclusion that he would have liked.

"There is always the danger of that occurrence. That an individual's beliefs or actions can come to define a culture, spices, or organization to an outside viewer. It is why I do my best to gather information about the artists I study, knowing of their specific history can let me interpret their artistic choices into the parts of them that are shaped by their larger culture, and into the parts of them that are shaped by individual choice."

"So you would say that your study of art is an anthropological pursuit?"

"I believe many would call it a passion."

"Or obsession?" Eli asked cheekily, hiding his smile behind his caf mug.

Thrawn steepled his fingers. "I can tell you if an enemy force will parley with us or shoot us out of the sky with a few minutes of research and a painting of local fruit from the commander's homeworld. Few obsessions can do that. It is simply tactics." Thrawn rarely smiled, but his eyes did curve in such a way that told Eli he was amused.

"Of course, sir." He dutifully went back to his datapad.

Now with caf in his system, Eli's eyes seemed to be able to focus more readily. He made it through an hour more of shipping logs before he read the same line for the sixth time in a row.

He sighed and put the datapad down again. _Kriff, we don't have time to sleep and we need sleep to find the fence so we can get sleep._

He looked up at Thrawn again. The chiss had his datapad propped up on his work station and was leaned back in his chair. His eyes lazily flicked back and forth, but the longer Eli watched, the smaller and smaller the slits of his eyes became.

 _Huh, so that's what exhaustion looks like on Thrawn._ He had been so awake and smug during their little art chat though...

"Have you made any art yourself?" Eli took the opportunity to pick off his second glove and leaned his elbows on the desk, he was too tired for formalities. "Like paintings, or collages, sculpting… music?"

Not his most smooth transition into conversation, but he was desperate to keep them both awake. He wasn't sure if he had the wherewithal to stay up if Thrawn passed out first.

Thrawn raised his head from where it had come to rest on the back of his chair and tapped his fingers against the arm as though deep in thought, but his voice came out measured if a little tired. "...you hesitated before you mentioned music. Judging by that I can assume you practice some kind of instrument? This is a surprise, I've never seen you do so."

Eli rested his chin in his hand. " _Practiced_ , past tense. It was before I left to join the navy."

"That would explain it."

"I knew a couple instruments, but I never wrote my own music, I just learned some classics and a couple popular songs. It was all just going through the motions, ya know?"

"Ah, but there's so much more than creation with music." Thrawn's eyes were no longer slitted and his focus was on Eli with the intensity that he only ever saw when he spoke about the artistic realm. Eli wondered when he had learned how to read Thrawn so easily, long gone were the days of thinking him so alien and hard to read. All he needed now was half a glance and he knew.

"I dunno," Eli shrugged in response. "It's just math, nothin’ fancy."

"You excelled at sight reading, did you not?”

Eli nodded into his hand. “Yeah, I was alright at it.”

"I'm not as practiced with analysing music as I am with physical art and traditional mediums. It's less about the actual song and more about how it's played, the lengths of pauses between notes, which ones are played with more force than the others, it's in the minutiae." Thrawn was now gesticulating lazily as though trying to make notes appear in thin air. “Music choice of course is part of it too."

"So you could tell a person's military strategy from the way a composer from their home plays a song?" Eli leaned forward, interested.

Thrawn lowered the hand he had been gesturing with. "Yes and no, as I said, I'm not as ah-- proficient in music. We spoke of dividing a person's art into two areas, larger cultural influences, and individual choices. Music is easier to do that with. A song written by the culture, which is telling of the larger influence, but the way it is played is more telling of the specific individual’s choices and disposition."

He nodded along into his palm. He wondered sleepily what Thrawn would have made of him and his mediocre attempts at playing popular songs on his mother's old stringed instrument. Could he still remember how to play? Maybe it was worth looking for a similar instrument when they were planet side on Coruscant next.

"It is an imprecise method however."

It was strange for Thrawn to be answering all of Eli's questions so openly. In a normal conversation, where both parties were not dead with exhaustion, Thrawn would have obfuscated or changed the subject. Even conversations about art seemed to stay squarely in impersonal limbo despite Eli's curiosity.

"If music is on the periphery, how about performance art, or theater?"

Thrawn was not very expressive. That didn't stop Eli from catching the face he made, the skin near the corner of his eyes wrinkled and his jaw tightened as his teeth clenched.

"Not a fan, I take it?"

"No, I do appreciate theater and performance art," Thrawn said in a voice that was more about convincing himself than Eli. "There's too much… ephemerality. It blurs the line between art and beings, things become… harder to read. There’s less time to consider possibilities, it’s a series of quick connections and assumptions. If one of those is incorrect, then your whole analysis is flawed and you can't revisit to review."

A flash of insight lit up Eli’s mind. “Its people,” he said before he could catch himself.

Thrawn looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He seemed to be chewing on words. It was only perceptible by the flicker of his eyes and the tilt of his jaw.

"People," Eli continued, drawn ever forward by the invisible tether of exhausted truth that seemed to have attached itself to his leaden tongue. It was a slow dawning realization. "It's not politics you struggle with. It never was. It's about having a firm material basis to construct an idea of the person or group from. It's people, its ephemerality."

Thrawn eyed him and Eli got the distinct impression that he was both chagrin and proud of him. "Quite. I had thought you might have come to that conclusion earlier. I haven't precisely tried to hide it… at least not from you."

Eli flashed a grin at him that quickly turned into a jaw cracking yawn. He took a second to wipe away tired tears from the corners of his eyes before continuing.

"Sorry for being slow on the uptake. It's not really something a lot of other people do."

"You have numbers."

"Not in the same way. That's just a talent, I don't think about people as datasets or calculations."

Thrawn shrugged minutely, a careless action for him that exhibited the unusual nature of their situation. "You have the same approach to both datasets and social interactions I find, I think you'd be surprised."

Eli shook his head, unwilling to argue. "Okay." Thrawn was probably right in some shape or form anyway, he was annoyingly good at being that.

Eli glanced down at his datapad and his eyes skipped off the solid block of data like a stone hitting an icy lake. The identical columns of claimed goods sent his addled mind into a tizzy.

He looked back up.

"Wait a second," Eli said accusingly. "You dodged the question, _Captain Thrawn_."

Thrawn raised a single perfect black eyebrow from behind his own datapad. 

"Have you made any art?"

Thrawn dropped his head back against his chair with a sigh. It was the most obvious sign of exhaustion he had seen as of yet. His datapad made a soft _clack_ as it was set back down on the desk.

"No."

Eli waited for more.

"I never have and I never will."

"How come? I thought out of anyone in the galaxy you would have at least made a painting, or a sculpture, or something."

Thrawn was quiet for so long that Eli wondered if he had pushed his luck too far.

"We mentioned ephemerality. Physical art, where you produce something that is meant to be enjoyed separately from yourself, pictures, sculpture, footage. It is the opposite of momentary, it is meant to change the people who see it, and to keep on doing so." He looked Eli directly in the eyes. "As you said, It is easier for me to determine a being's intentions by the angle of their brush or their choice of colors than their actions or their lies. Could you look at your soul laid bare before you and be the same afterwards?"

Eli blinked. "I… don't know." He couldn't stop himself from grinning though. "Can you really see artist's souls?" He was trying his best not to laugh, the strange hypoxia like fog of tiredness buoying him along.

Thrawn frowned like a startled Lolthcat. "No. It was a metaphor… a dramatic metaphor at that." He ran a hand down his own face, muttering something under his breath.

"I didn't mean to make fun of--" Eli didn't think _sorry for making fun of you sir_ was going to be the best apology. "I didn't mean to make light of this conversation. Thank you for sharing with me."

Thrawn nodded shortly and looked back at his datapad.

"I don't know if I could," Eli said it softly, as though trying not to frighten a wild animal. "If I could deconstruct myself, look at every detail in an unbiased light, all the places that were shaped by Lysatra and by the navy and--" _and you_ "--and my own decisions, and not be changed by it."

Thrawn's gaze flicked back up to him, his eyes unnaturally focused despite the faint tired magenta bruises under his eyes. The look bore into Eli and he felt like a moth pinned to a display board. A small part of his mind wondered if this was what it was like to be a piece of art under Thrawn's scrutiny.

Thrawn exhaled finally, braking off his stare. He interlaced his hands and pressed the top of the arch just above his mouth.

"I… had a different view on art long ago. It wasn't a tool back then, simply a passion. I wonder sometimes, what I would have done with it if I hadn't…" Thrawn paused and Eli leaned forward, eager for anything about his past. "If I hadn't followed the path I chose."

Eli nodded, leaning back in his chair again, disappointed. The walls between them, despite being lower than ever, never disappeared.

"My passion and skill for interpreting art is now a tool to understand people, as you say. I use this to make sound judgements, to keep everyone on the _Thunder Wasp_ alive, and to fulfill our missions, and..."

Thrawn as quiet for a very long time after that last statement. But the air buzzed with unspoken words that Eli felt moving between them. From what he knew, Thrawn had worked in a military analogous to the Empire, and in a similar capacity. There then, he would have learned the application of his ability.

Thrawn broke the silence in a low, steady voice. He wasn't looking at Eli any longer, he was studying the top of his desk, as though he found it difficult to meet Eli's eyes. "...sometimes people die. It is still strange to me to use my personal passion in such a utilitarian way, despite the length of time I've employed it for."

 _Ah,_ Eli thought through the muddled fog of exhaustion. These were strange and murky waters. He wasn't sure what to say or what to feel, Thrawn was so rarely open about himself, but he had never been awake for over twenty three hours with him before, perhaps this was par for the course. Exhaustion lowered inhibitions and emotional walls after all, and Eli felt… he felt sad. There was a branch of reality out there where Thrawn had avoided the empire navy and whatever defence organization they had at his original home. He found himself wondering about that reality, what it would look like to have to blade sharp chiss sitting across from him laser focused on writing art reviews and managing galleries. It was so incongruous that he almost laughed again.

 _It isn't funny though._ That thought hit him like a blow. _It's sad,_ and it was. There was a lost branch of Eli's life, the one lost to him when Thrawn drew him off his original path and into the unknown.

Eli looked at Thrawn hard, had the same thing happened to Thrawn? It was strange to think of Thrawn mourning a lost future more than Eli. He had come to peace with the fact that he would never have that quiet life of obscurity managing numbers. But Eli had Thrawn to guide him, and Thrawn had…

The silence had stretched too long. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'm sorry, this is--"

"No, my apologies, my words were inappropriate." Thrawn took a breath, ready to change topics. "To expand on your original question, I am also not trained in art as much as I appreciate it. Anything I would produce would be neither pleasing nor worthwhile."

 _You're worthwhile. You, Mitth'raw'nuruodo, have worth._ But he doesn't say it. For it's an incomplete thought. Thrawn knows he has worth. He knows he's valuable to the navy and to his superiors and in the grander scheme of things. But that's not what Eli's thought means, and he doesn't feel like he can articulate it without spilling open a deep hidden cavern in his heart. _You're worthwhile to me. To the world outside of the navy and the game the galaxy plays with the fate of its people._

There was a _bleat_ from Thrawn's workstation. It almost startled Eli out of his chair. Thrawn worked over the terminal for a second before tapping the side of it with his forefinger, a sign that Eli knew meant he was satisfied with something.

"The holoscan arrived."

Eli nodded and then cleared his throat. "Back to it then, sir."

"Yes." 

His tired eyes descended back to his datapad. He felt like he had read the same rows before… wait.

It took him five minutes of cross referencing before he found it. A discrepancy, a few duplicate shipments, all logged with perfect timing to the pirate's arrival. He inhaled sharply through his teeth.

"I think I have it!"

Thrawn was up and around his desk in a flash, a hand on the back of Eli's chair and eyes studying the rows and columns of the two datapads Eli was comparing. It was plain as day, and just as incriminating.

Thrawn exhaled softly. "Excellent. Good job ensign Vanto," Thrawn reached to shake his hand in congratulations. "Let's hope we needn't do this again."

Eli's exhausted, addled brain was about to blurt _"no, I had a pretty good time actually, I like it when I can ask you questions and you answer. You so rarely let me behind your walls. It was nice."_ But Eli had forgotten to put his gloves back on, and at some point in the long hours, so had Thrawn.

It was strange. Before he had joined the navy, shaking someone's bare hand was a matter of course. Now everyone wore gloves, everyone wore uniforms, no one touched each other, except maybe in the sparring rooms. But Thrawn didn't participate there overmuch and neither did Eli.

Thrawn's hand was surprisingly warm and felt surprisingly solid, like any other beings.

Eli left Thrawn's office to deliver the datapad to the bridge, where they would contact the task force on stand-by. He flexed his hand open and shut as he walked, the sensation still lingering.

 _Why **wouldn't** he feel like any other person? _Eli asked himself. _He is just one more being in the universe._

**Author's Note:**

> Me @ Timothy Zahn: maybe let Thrawn have faults, feelings, and insecurities???


End file.
